Have you been struggling with abdominal pains or swelling in the legs? Do you feel nauseous for no apparent reason? Or perhaps your skin appears more yellow than usual—or maybe it’s been itching lately? These are not just pesky annoyances, but possibly the signs of a liver malfunction. It also can be the beginning of liver cirrhosis.

A fairly large organ that weighs approximately three pounds, liver resides on the right side of the upper abdomen underneath and behind the rib cage. It is essentially the body’s chemical and detoxification factory, which produces substances and compounds necessary for digestion and for metabolizing sugars, fats and other nutrients. Your liver produces bile, which is delivered into the intestines where it helps in fat digestion. It also produces proteins that help blood clot so that you wouldn’t hemorrhage from a mild cut. It is also responsible for detoxifying your entire body. Your liver filters damaging toxins from your blood by changing them into harmless compounds and flushing them out of your system—either through the blood steam and the kidneys or through the bile and the intestines. When your liver is not working properly, your body can get so putrefied by various metabolic byproducts and environmental toxins that you won’t last long.

Liver cirrhosis is a disease in which healthy liver tissue is slowly replaced with scar tissue. As the scar tissue hardens, it blocks the blood flow through the organ, interfering with bile and proteins production, blood clean up and toxins removal. Eventually, as cirrhosis prevents the liver from doing its job, the body becomes poisoned by toxins and weakened because of missing nutrients. Cirrhosis may take years to develop, but it is considered a chronic condition.

What causes the scar tissue to develop? There’s a gamut of things that can contribute to that, from alcoholism and drug abuse to hepatitis and cystic fibrosis to parasites and autoimmune disease. Some of these factors – such as diet and alcohol consumption you may be able to adjust. Unfortunately, it’s easy to miss the early stage of liver cirrhosis development because it doesn’t manifest itself in any kind of drastic symptoms. Besides stomach aches or swelling legs, other symptoms may include fatigue, strange weight loss, and easy bruising and bleeding, but many of these warning signs can be easily overlooked.

Mild and early-stage cirrhosis can be corrected with proper changes in the diet and lifestyle. But if you’re battling an autoimmune liver disease, your options are more limited. While liver is a very efficient organ that can repair itself to an extent, eventually it may fail to work well. And advanced cirrhosis can be irreversible—the liver will eventually cease to function properly.

When the liver fails, the only remedy is a liver transplant, which may be a costly and difficult option. Liver donors are not easy to find. Transplant surgery is a major medical procedure that can also take a toll on your entire body. And, after everything is done, your body may reject the transplant. That’s why many patients with liver cirrhosis, in early or later stages regardless, opt for alternative therapies, which may reverse the damage and restore some of the liver function. Herbal and homeopathic remedies have proven to be effective alternative to transplants. They can also help cleanse the body from the toxic build-up and provide some of the missing nutrients. At Amita Healing Center we have a variety of therapies that can help you clean your liver and restore its natural functioning.